KEI - Gallery Vol. 06 – artbooks.me

Title: Gallery Vol. 06
タイトル: 画 vol.06
Release Date: 08/15/2010
Pages: 24 (including covers)

Reading Time: 3 minutes

The sixth volume of KEI’s illustration series, Ga, was released during Comiket 78, continuing KEI’s tradition of full-color illustration releases. The usual content is present in this volume; a little from Vocaloid, a little from Touhou, some original works and various fan arts from popular shows and games. KEI’s painterly style continues to impress, although an anime-style is also appearing in these volumes more and more.

Ga Vol. 06 is B5-sized and 24 pages including the covers. The printing style is identical to the last three volumes published, with the same textured pages that make the dark colors slightly less dark, but soak up the ink in such a way that the printing looks seamless.

As you can see, there’s a lot of fan art in here. Also, you can really see KEI’s anime-style in the K-on! Azunyan illustration above. I don’t like it as much as the usual painted-look, but it’s good to have variety. Taiga from Toradora! in her other school uniform makes another appearance in this volume of Ga. She was also featured in the Winter 2009 Comiket release Ga Vol. 05. Rinko from Love Plus is also in this volume twice, she might be KEI’s favorite!

In addition to the cover art, there are seven other original illustrations in the book. As nice as KEI’s fan works are, I still prefer the original illustrations, especially those for the KEI Garou mascot, Nakano. The black and white cat girls are very similar to the original characters KEI used in a comic for the first volume of Gelatin Magazine.

While most of the illustrations receive a full page in this book, there are two pages of tiled illustrations, many of which were initially website illustrations. Though Ga Vol. 06 is really more of the same, it’s something I’ve come to enjoy and at this point I can’t really imagine passing on one of KEI’s illustration volumes.